Back in primary school, when I was in my very first year, so aged about five, a girl was sick in class, and it made me feel very very sick. At school lunch, rice pudding was served as dessert, which reminded me horribly, of the vomit I’d just seen. This was the beginning of my weird relationship with food…

I used to not eat my school lunches because, even though it was no longer rice pudding, I still made that link, which is pretty stupid but I was 5 years old… It got to a point where the teachers rang my mum to tell her I wasn’t eating lunch and I think after addressing it, over time it got better..

Fast forward to now, and I’m really bad at eating when nervous. Nerves make me feel sick, even a tiny amount of nervousness. I don’t know if this is linked, but I feel it must be!

Once when I was 14 I went on a holiday, with a friend and their family to a caravan for a week. I was much more shy when I was younger, and I struggled to be around a lot of people I wasn’t familiar with, and part of this was eating. I really struggled to eat anything cooked for me, but when I went out with just my friend I could eat easily…

I also have an issue with restaurants- the pressure to eat in an environment where that is the only thing you do gets rid of my appetite entirely. This doesn’t happen every time I go to a restaurant, though. Sometimes I’ll eat and then after I’ll feel overly full and sick, sometimes I’ll eat half and get full and feel sick mid bite, and sometimes I’ll be absolutely fine. I think it’s very much environment dependent.

It’s a bit of a pain, because I know it’s all in my head, and I can overcome it, but it’s a weird one! It’s not something that affects my daily life because I don’t eat out daily, so I don’t really address it!